←back to thread

Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

(news.mit.edu)
581 points gnabgib | 2 comments | 20 Nov 24 16:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
araes ◴[20 Nov 24 18:26 UTC] No.42196753[source]▶
Started looking and found out there's some much worse, and far more obvious cases that need to implement these reforms. [1]

UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.

BTW, amazing site to be horrified by gun violence (and vaguely fascinated). Look upon the awfulness of Philadelphia. [2] Sitting in their safe little haven while East and South is wounding murder land with overlapping murder / wounding statistics. (12k from 2014-2023, 190/100000 urban) [3] Northwestern and the violence everywhere South in Chi-town is maybe a personal second choice. ($13,700,000,000, +74%, 26.9k, 280/100000 urban) [4][5]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...

[2] (Guns, Philadelphia) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

[3] (Location, UPenn) https://www.google.com/maps/place/University+of+Pennsylvania...

[4] (Guns, Chicago) https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...

[5] (Location, Northwestern) https://www.google.com/maps/place/Northwestern+University/@4...

replies(11): >>42196780 #>>42197216 #>>42197243 #>>42197247 #>>42197346 #>>42197616 #>>42198654 #>>42198833 #>>42199711 #>>42200472 #>>42200996 #
rs999gti ◴[20 Nov 24 20:08 UTC] No.42197616[source]▶
> UPenn is THE most obvious. Sitting on a $20,000,000,000 endowment fund that went up +170% over 10 years while Philadelphia rots with drug use, poverty, and gun violence.

Why is it UPENN's responsibility to solve these issues? This is Philadelphia's problem, the university is just a business operating in the city.

replies(4): >>42197884 #>>42198004 #>>42198417 #>>42198422 #
bradchris ◴[20 Nov 24 20:40 UTC] No.42197884[source]▶
I think that speaks to the low bar we have come to expect from our endowed institutions today more than anything else.

American Universities, historically, are supposed to improve not just their students’ lives but also society as a whole, especially as serving as boosters for the city they’re in and their immediate neighbors. That’s why they’re nonprofits. That’s also likely their strongest lifeline to remain relevant in the future rather than as the hollow alumni clubs and gatekeepers their critics say they are, with AI/the internet/online schooling/topic of the day breaking down socioeconomic barriers to knowledge access

That’s why the Carnegies and Mellons built libraries, museums, and the very literally named Carnegie-Mellon university, back then. Now it seems like the first thing billionaires today do is isolate themselves and their wealth from the masses as much as possible.

replies(2): >>42199199 #>>42200586 #
1. zaptheimpaler ◴[21 Nov 24 02:47 UTC] No.42200586[source]▶
I doubt they could even if they wanted to. All problems cannot be solved by throwing money at them, and the local governments may not be cooperative or efficient enough to use the money. There are chemically engineered drugs that will gigafry your brain into addiction in one dose getting better every day. Police departments all over the country/west seem to be ineffective at enforcing order, courts are too delayed and too lenient on sentencing, list goes on. Problems on the public side that private enterprise can't really fix without a lot of cooperation. Maybe in a much less regulated world like the Carnegie's, they would be able to try a lot of things without permission, now it would take years of begging to get a permit to build a drug rehab centre somewhere no matter how rich you are and the neighbors would block it.
replies(1): >>42201887 #
2. janalsncm ◴[21 Nov 24 07:11 UTC] No.42201887[source]▶
At the same time there are many places that seem to have figured it out. The way Philadelphia chooses to run their city isn’t the only way.